Thursday, October 29, 2009

Reaction to the Poets & Writers MFA Rankings

Early reports suggest that by and large the rankings have been received extremely well, and seen for the probative starting-point they intend to be--however imperfect they are, and however much (particularly with the unscientific portion of the rankings comprised by the applicant poll) it will take years to continue refining the methodology for the project. As to that part of the rankings that constitute the first-ever hard-data funding ranking, selectivity ranking, and postgraduate ranking (and the handful of data-based assessments published also), there's been no criticism, and the consensus seems to be these will help applicants in the months and years ahead.

I want to thank all of you who've sent along words of support and encouragement to me in the past few days. As the P&W article says (several times), no ranking can or should claim to be a conclusive assessment of program quality, nor be a primary element in any applicant's matriculation determination--but I do hope these rankings can be one tool among many in a field where (for too long) critical admissions and funding information have been systematically withheld from the programs' most important and invested constituents: applicants.

[Poets & Writers rankings #1 to #52 can be found here, and #53 to #142 here; an excerpt from the methodology article is here].

Recommended Links

MFA Handbook

The Creative Writing MFA Handbook: A Guide for Prospective Students, by Tom Kealey (with essays by Seth Abramson, Erika Dreifus, Adam Johnson, and Ed Schwarzschild) is available from Continuum Publishing. The Handbook offers an overview of the graduate writing experience, profiles and rankings of more than fifty creative writing programs, advice about the application process, and insight into making the best choice of programs. There is a comprehensive list of all graduate writing programs, both in and outside the United States, a list of helpful sources on and off-line, and interviews with teachers and students, including George Saunders, Aimee Bender, Geoffrey Wolff, and Tracy K. Smith.